The Unknown Gate
by Sempu
Summary: Starting immediately after the movie, an enterprising engineer finds himself committed to rescuing Pandora. I am more aware than most people what liberties I have taken with physics in this story. But feel free to use them as discussion points with less scientifically informed friends. Avatar and its characters are the property of people other than me.
1. Prologue

**The Unknown Gate**

We shall not cease from exploration  
And the end of all our exploring  
Will be to arrive where we started  
And know the place for the first time.  
Through the unknown, remembered gate  
When the last of earth left to discover  
Is that which was the beginning;  
At the source of the longest river  
The voice of the hidden waterfall  
And the children in the apple-tree  
Not known, because not looked for  
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness  
Between two waves of the sea.

— T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding," _Four Quartets_

The first battle for Pandora ended with the human occupation being ousted from the planet by a massive gathering of the Na'vi clans.

The second battle for Pandora was fought by a much smaller group, against much larger odds. This is their story.

* * *

**Prologue**

The only Valkyrie shuttle within four light years sat on the ramp at Hell's Gate, preflight checks underway in the cockpit. In the shattered remains of the control room nearby, a human and a Na'vi avatar were in deep conversation.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Jake, it's the only way. If you let them control the news there's no hope for you here."

"Isaac ... you know what they'll do to you if they find out."

"I'm the only one who can do this. They think I bleed RDA gray. They don't know I'm with you."

"What you're giving up... this is a bigger sacrifice than I can possibly imagine."

"I can't let them come back and take this away from you. People have to know."

The pause was heavy with emotion too dense for words. Finally the human spoke.

"I have to get on board now. Goodbye, Jake. The people of Earth will see this. I promise." He rose, lugging a weighty info-pack.

Four hours later, the Valkyrie docked with the ISV _Venture Star, _and Parker Selfridge queasily pulled himself into the larger vessel. He did not do well in free fall, but on this occasion he had been nauseous even before the shuttle took off. He made for the communications room. The supraluminal communicator was both the fastest and the slowest transmitter ever made. Fastest, because it could transmit faster than the speed of light over interstellar distances using the principle of quantum entanglement. Slowest, because each bit that was transmitted took twenty minutes to send while the transceiver synchronized with its mate on Earth, a rate that made semaphore seem like broadband. Therefore the RDA Communications Department had developed several hundred "speed codes," common messages denoted with single short numbers that were listed in the official codebook for interstellar vessels.

Selfridge had given much thought to the message he was going to send and still didn't have a good idea. But the first part was not in question. Despite the length of time it took to send each bit, the RDA supraluminal communications protocol wasted a certain amount of bandwidth: no routine transmission was allowed to contain a sequence of more than six 'one' bits. Because if a sequence of _eight_ ones was ever sent from Pandora, it would be a speed code with a very special meaning.

_Evacuation_.

Selfridge ordered the code sent.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 - Fifteen years earlier**

_Idiots._

"And now I give you the man of the hour–heck, the man of the _century_—Austin McKinney!"

_Morons._

"Thanks, Bill. It's not every day you get to prove Einstein wrong, and I gotta say, he gave us a run for our money. But in the end, ol' Al just wasn't a match for the boys of Broadlawn. Just think what he could have done with an RDA endowment!"

_Cretins._

"For the benefit of the viddy and webby audiences just joining us, Austin, can you explain again how you..."

The dialogue of the back-patting carnival faded as Victor Enzo rounded the bend in the corridor away from the auditorium where the massive press conference had been hastily convened. He stalked into his office and saw a puny box of his personal possessions already on the desk next to an anything but puny security guard. Of course; why should they waste any time? Standard protocol for anyone dismissed from RDA Broadlawn Research Center: Walked off, if not carried off, by security. Your badge please, sir, thank you, sir, please take the box, sir, thank you, sir, come with me, sir. The same protocol whether or not you'd been caught faking your timecard, stealing electronic parts, or screwing the secretary in the store room.

Or breaking a major law of physics.

Enzo held his anger under a tight lid until his escort left him outside the turnstile by the main parking lot. Then he vented with a stream of invective.

"I guess that's better than bottling it up," he heard someone observe drily. Enzo pivoted and saw a lanky figure strolling over in the afternoon haze. Carrying a cardboard box.

"Dimitri! So they got you, too. Figures."

"Quite the stroke of luck," observed the other man without a trace of irony.

"Luck! Are you insane? You _know_ what we could be doing with those results–you know it should be us in that conference instead of that patsy McKinney. What sort of luck is that?"

Dimitri Sereda fixed his friend with that intense stare he had always found unsettling. "I mean lucky that Vorsicht let us go. If he'd realized what we're capable of, we would be coming out of there inside boxes, not carrying them."

Enzo rubbed his stubble. "Yeah. Yeah." He paused, then looked Sereda up and down with an exaggerated motion. "So what are you waiting for? We've got work to do."

* * *

It had all started two weeks earlier. Enzo's Quantum Communication Research lab had been a maelstrom of activity, its occupants toiling under an implacable deadline only days away. Enzo had been sequestered in a conference room with Sereda, equations covering every whiteboard and wall when McKinney sauntered in.

"Vic, I need you to sign these contract reassignments. Your people need to be taken care of after the thirty-first."

Enzo glared. "They're not going anywhere. The knowledge massed in this lab is priceless. We're not going to cast it to the winds." He had long suspected his budget officer of being a closet spy for General Vorsicht, the RDA line officer with direct authority over Broadlawn.

"Vic, man. I'm just sayin'; you've got two days left. Don't drag everyone else down with your ship. They're good people."

Enzo ground his teeth. "That's why they're staying with me. But feel free to shoot your own resume to HR."

Three years of generous RDA funding had produced no results, and the end of the fiscal year was one day away. Enzo's dream of supraluminal communication was going to be cut off at the knees.

There was only one full scale lab test left. With typical Enzo flair, it was scheduled for 4PM on the last day of funding, and it would use up the entire remainder of the project's energy budget. It was a static test, an anti-climax for anyone not in the know. All a spectator would see would be the couch-sized test chamber, engineers glued to their workstations, and a nondescript LED displaying the effective communication speed as a fraction of the speed of light.

Sereda wrinkled his nose in apparent distaste as McKinney breezed out. "Don't let him rattle you, Victor. Eyes on the prize."

Enzo shovelled his hair wearily. "Right. Like we're going to pull a miracle in two days. Three years and it still comes down to NFE." He used the common project abbreviation for "Nobody Fucks with Einstein."

"But that's why you brought me on board," observed Sereda.

"That was a crazy strong anthropic principle bullshit idea, Dimitri. I don't know what I was thinking. No offense. We've been over this before."

"Maybe your intuition was smarter than you, Victor. We've been over this before, too."

"Well... if there's really anything to those extrasensory abilities of yours, this would be the time to use them. Maybe get inside Vorsicht's mind and convince him to give us another year of funding."

Sereda pinned Enzo with a stare. "Victor, did it ever occur to you that it _has_ to work out this way?"

Enzo did a double take. "What do you mean? It _has_ to come down to the wire? Science _has_ to wait until the last minute to give us the result we want? Maybe you should have taken a physics major instead of playing with Rhine cards. It doesn't work like that."

"Maybe it does if you're changing the rules. Changing the universe. To one where NFE isn't in charge."

Enzo snorted. "I got off the strong anthropic principle train a while ago, Dimitri. But it sounds like you've been riding the first class carriage into Crazyville."

The other man smiled tightly. "This is what you pay me for, Victor."

"Well that won't be for much longer, will it. Does your brilliant theory translate into any plan of action?"

"Well, since you mentioned getting inside someone's mind—"

Sereda laid out his thoughts. When Enzo pushed away from the table in disgust, Sereda pulled him back down and patiently explained again. The discussion continued into the night, reminiscent of their college days of earnest debates, back when everyone thought they could solve the world's problems over German ale and Turkish coffee.

* * *

The next day, Enzo was nowhere to be seen. The staff set up the experiment, nervously gossiping about their leader's absence. At 3:59, Enzo swept into the lab, a barrel-chested invasion followed by the slight Sereda. He said nothing as he took up a seat in front of the test chamber viewing port, in sight of the LED. His eyes were unblinking, hyperfocused, and a pale sheen glistened on his forehead. Virgil Dixon, the chief scientist, approached Enzo hesitantly, quizzically, but a motion from Sereda told him to back off. At 4:00 exactly, the field generators were switched on and the quantum transceivers started synchronizing. The LED flickered to life and a number started racing upward: 0.8, 0.9, 0.99, 0.999. Inside the chamber, the quantum pairing communication system was cycling continuously, but it was not bandwidth that mattered. It took only one bit to change the universe, if it traveled fast enough.

Enzo appeared not to be breathing. Sereda was not looking at the experiment but instead was focused on his friend. The LED approached the previous record: 0.9999999985. The power gauges approached maximum draw. Sereda took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Enzo was a glass statue, eyes glittering, skin taut, muscles bunched, and inside his head a single thought pounded against his skull, purified to fanatical concentration through Sereda's telepathic assistance:_ 1.00000000001_. For an eternity of a few seconds the lab was suspended in time, on the cusp of falling back along the same trajectory of failure as countless times before, when Sereda formed an action in his mind that if it had a word, would have been: _PUSH_.

And the universe shifted. The number on the LED cycled to 1.0000000000, almost immediately hit 1.00000000001, then rocketed upwards. When Sereda opened his eyes it was reading 4871925.10 and the staff were stunned, gaping. Enzo came to life, suddenly aware of the dryness of his mouth, eyes finally focusing on something else: Dixon, the first staff member to regain his senses.

"It's real," assured Dixon, although Enzo had not asked this time. "We've got tachyon traces matching every prediction. We've done it. We've beaten Einstein."

* * *

Had Enzo been what the senior management called a "team player" and what he called a "fucking sheep," he would have been the one collecting the glory and filing the patents two weeks later. But he had to try to convince them of the ramifications of his development.

"Those morons don't know a breathrough from their arseholes," he ranted to Sereda. "We kick Einstein in the pants and have a transmission rate of one bit every twenty hours. And their idea of a stretch goal is one bit every five hours! They don't get it! _Everything_ is up for grabs. Now that we've pushed information past light speed, we should be able do it for _matter_. But no, they want to sit on this, keep it to themselves, publish as little as possible. Where would we be if Salk had done the same thing with the polio vaccine instead of giving it away? Thank God he wasn't working for the RDA!"

And with that attitude, it was only a matter of time before he found himself standing on the sidewalk holding a cardboard box. He and Sereda set up their own lab in the Catskills, on a shoestring budget. The staff he was able to afford tended toward counterculture types, which suited Enzo fine, as long as he didn't have to listen to their environmentalist rants.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Parker Selfridge finished composing the most painful message of his life. There was no way to conceal the fact that the Pandora outpost had been routed by a handful of natives and their pets. Nevertheless, he was a master at finessing the truth. He floated onto the bridge of the InterStellar Vessel _Venture Star,_ and met the crew with a bravado he truly did not feel.

"Sanchez, get this into the supraluminal. Encrypt the hell out of it. Mallory, run a muster list and ordnance inventory and give it to Sanchez for an attachment. By the way, you look like hell. Galloway, when do we go into cryo? I need to know how long I've got to get drunk."

The crew grimaced at each other. Galloway, the shuttle pilot, spoke first.

"Sir, we've been talking, and... well, sir, we want to know what's going to happen to our contracts when we get back. Do we get paid or do they invoke the "failure to perform" clause? You know that legal stuff better than we do, sir."

Selfridge's jaw dropped. He had no idea how to answer.

Much later, when the entire crew was in cryo except for the rotating watch, one person was still awake, and feeding an infopack's data to a radio that was not part of the ship's systems. The transmission rate was considerably faster than the supraluminal, but the amount of data enormous. And it would not arrive at its destination for five years.

* * *

"Take the Amazon, for instance. That used to be covered in rainforest. But now it's all farmland and factories."

Jerry Slidell was regaling his boss over lunch with a familiar message. Enzo played devil's advocate.

"Sure, but people gotta eat. If it was more economical to get the food any other way we'd do it. So there's no choice."

Slidell was not buying it this time. "You know better than that, Victor. The game is rigged through government subsidies because the incremental costs of environmental damage can't be allocated to the sectors that caused it."

"Well that's not exactly a great sound bite, is it? Try convincing Joe Public with that argument."

Slidell shifted. "Yeah. But now we have... something a bit different." He was guarded, nervous.

"Really? Tell me."

"Actually I have to show you." Slidell did not go into the agonizing debates that he and his fellow environmentalists had had around the decision to include Enzo in their secret. They really had no choice, after all.

The demonstration turned out to take place in a basement in Albany. When Enzo saw the equipment he balked.

"Don't worry, it's had all its inspections," said Slidell, misreading Enzo's reaction on seeing an avatar capsule. But Enzo was reliving a recurring nightmare he'd had for months after trying an early capsule prototype years earlier. In it, he was trapped inside the capsule, all his senses denied any input at all as the system fed him no data whatsoever–except a repeating visual that flashed the word "RECONFIGURING" in front of his eyes over and over. He had been caught in an endless loop, a simulacrum of a hellish afterlife that had permanently colored his notions of eternity. Since then, he had pointedly avoided all opportunities to try an avatar capsule or anything resembling one.

"What is this hooked up to?" Enzo demanded. "I don't have an avatar, unless someone's been stealing my DNA without telling me."

"The system is in playback mode. Field avatar systems record all sessions. These recordings are from Pandora," replied Slidell. The cluster of fellow environmentalists eyed Enzo intently.

"Pandora! But all those sessions are classified. I'd be breaking the law just by not turning you in."

"Oh, it gets better. These recordings were received by our own group a few weeks ago. They were recorded on Pandora up to four and a half years ago. We have a mole in the science team. He stayed awake for six months to transmit these from a returning ISV while everyone else was in cryo."

Enzo looked around the room incredulously, bushy eyebrows beetling. "Exactly why should I not turn all of you reactionaries in for a fat reward? What makes you think I want to risk my ass for your little conspiracy?"

Slidell was outwardly calm, but his pulse was racing. "Watch this extract we've compiled for you. It's two hours long. After that, you can turn us in if you want."

Enzo thought it over. "Deal."

He was guided into the pod, experiencing a familiar surge of claustrophobia when the lid closed. There was a sensation of falling, and he saw blackness all around. Then an image formed in front of him. It was the single blinking word "RECONFIGURING."

Enzo panicked as the old nightmare happened for real. He was on the verge of a scream when he realized it wasn't quite the same as his dream–the font was different, for one thing–and then the word disappeared, and was replaced by an image of a blue face. The image came into focus, like the process of fusing a stereogram. He was in a scene, experiencing a playback of an avatar driver session, and he could hear it as well.

"This is Jake Sully, serial number 256-OZU-004, on deployment number one, March 19, 2154, and this is what I look like."

The blue face disappeared as the avatar put down the mirror, and revealed the gardens adjoining Hell's Gate.

Enzo was carried through a series of carefully edited playbacks. When Sully met Neytiri, Enzo's pulse fluttered. Was that from the playback? The connection was only supposed to reproduce external senses, not autonomic functions. When the battle with Quaritch happened, Enzo felt battered, but not on the verge of death as Sully had been. He wondered desperately what had happened to Sully after he had clawed his way out of the capsule to find an exopack. Emotionally, he was wrung dry. When he–when Sully–saw Neytiri again after the battle, Enzo was exultant, spent, ecstatic.

Was he also in love?

And then the outcome of the battle was played out. Enzo saw the mercenaries rounded up for departure. He sucked in his breath as he realized what was going to happen–had already happened, nearly five years ago, he reminded himself–to Sully's human body. Then Sully was speaking to the mirror again.

"I'm sending these recordings back to Earth because we need help. We threw the RDA out once, by the grace of Eywa, but we were lucky. If they come back, we may not be so lucky. And they _will_ come back. They can't afford not to. You've seen what's at stake here. People like the RDA already fucked up Earth. Don't let them do it to Pandora. Please. Help us. This is Jake Sully, signing off."

Enzo found his eyes wet. But more than that, something was nagging at him, a memory. Something about the time... Then he had it. Four years ago, a brief conversation with Dimitri, who had some gossip from an RDA back channel: _Yeah, he said the ISV _Dreadnought_ shipped out yesterday loaded for bear. Like they were going to blow up a planet or something._

Deductions cascaded in his head. The date of the last avatar recording, add in an instantaneous transmission over the supraluminal, and the time to provision an ISV mission. There was only one possible interpretation. Suddenly, light washed over him as Slidell opened the pod. Enzo climbed out, a room full of eyes studying him. For a long time, there was silence as Enzo gathered his thoughts.

"I... had no idea what was going on up there," he finally said, inadequately.

"The propaganda is pretty complete, ain't it?" said Slidell. Another pregnant pause, then Enzo spoke simply.

"I will help."


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Unaware of the drama playing out on Earth, Jake Sully was in his own struggle within the Omaticaya. No longer cowed by a common enemy doing battle with them, the tribe was increasingly less willing to accept his dominance blindly. Subtle reminders were tossed around about how Jake was Na'vi in biology only. He had never been raised as one of them, and lacked much of the cultural frame of reference shared among the people. Ignorance of small but basic elements such as children's games was part of his charm when he was a newcomer, insulting when he was clan leader.

"These things are not important, Jake," said Neytiri, with unbending loyalty. But she knew that was not enough. Even providing the clan with their child, a daughter born not long after the _Venture Star _left, had not lessened the tensions. There was only one possible course of action, freighted with peril. They discussed it.

* * *

There was only one possible course of action. Slidell, of all people, was the hardest to convince.

"Victor, you _are_ insane. Just because you broke one law of physics already now you think you can just do it on demand? And in less than twelve months?"

Enzo turned to Virgil Dixon, who was listening with Sereda. "No, actually, I'm not going to. You are."

"_What?_"

"I'm busy with the operational planning. You're my chief engineer. So go engineer."

"Look, Victor, it's one thing to prove Einstein wrong–after all, it was only ever the _theory_ of relativity–but now you want to break a fundamental _law?_ You don't just eliminate inertia because it's inconvenient!"

Enzo sighed. "Einstein was bulletproof until we came along. Now everyone says, 'Well of course he was wrong, look at this equation and that derivation, and it's obvious,' but they completely forget how absolutely fucking inevitable relativity looked until we just went and demonstrated otherwise. This is the same."

"_Why?_ Why is it the same?"

"Because it has to be. Because we will change the universe so that it is."

Dixon turned on Sereda. "You really got to him, didn't you? You and your crazy ideas. Ever since Broadlawn you've been the Messiah and he's been your disciple."

Sereda was unfazed. "So what does that make you, Virgil? Doubting Thomas?" Dixon stared and prepared to escalate the exchange when Enzo interrupted.

"Shut up, everyone. This is not optional. Next item on the agenda: We're going to need money... lots of it."

"I suppose you can break the laws of economics while you're at it," said Dixon sarcastically.

Sereda chewed his lip. "There is one possibility..."

* * *

Three months later InterDev, Inc., was born, with a balance sheet north of one billion dollars, ninety percent of which was venture capital and leverage drummed up through Enzo's relentless proselytizing for the putative cause of asteroid mining. The seed ten percent had been raised through a byzantine and theoretically impenetrable web of shell corporations designed to hide the fact that all their capital had been made through "insider" trading. Sereda's extrasensory perception had developed to the point where he could pick up enough details from the thoughts of key corporate executives to inform strategic trades. The orders could be disguised through numerous proxies in the shell corporations, but they had been resorting to increasingly more exotic plays to avoid triggering the securities fraud monitors.

Dixon's comment had been "Why didn't you come up with this before? We could have used this kind of dough a lot earlier." Sereda decided to forgo explaining the risks he was taking and settled for explaining that his ESP had only recently expanded to a level capable of these feats.

Despite this skullduggery, Enzo knew it was only a matter of time before Vorsicht got wind of their intentions. He was counting on the general not believing that they could pull it off. Nevertheless, he would need more insurance than that.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The ISV _Venture Star_ was decelerating below a tenth of the speed of light, and that meant it was approaching the heliopause, the outer edge of the Solar System, with less than six months to arrival. While most of the crew would remain in dreamless frozen sleep until a few days before that event, Selfridge had been so jittery as to request being woken up when there was still a month of flight time to go, so he would have time to assess his options in the light of current news from the home planet. Right now he was still lying stiff as a plank with a faint rime of tequila frosting his lips. But one man had already started defrosting, a man who had remained awake for the first half year of the voyage to babysit a clandestine transmission to Earth.

* * *

Under Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, in a facility once used to monitor threats to the United States from space, the Resources Development Administration's Space Operations Center controlled every vehicle the RDA had in flight. A frequent visitor there was awaiting the _Venture Star's_ return with undiluted disgust. General Joseph Vorsicht believed in personal, direct, and painful contact with the officers under his command. He stomped around the control room like a caged grizzly. The soft voices of controllers directing traffic around the Earth punctuated the silence. "LTV _Sentinel_ cleared for TLI," declared the intrasystem controller, and a lunar transfer ship started heading for trans-lunar orbital injection.

Vorsicht was interested in more distant assets. "Status on _Venture Star?_" he growled.

The extrasolar controller gave his routine report, adding, "Range 261 AU, all systems nominal." He didn't need to reiterate the main anomaly, that there was only one Valkyrie shuttle attached. Usually, attention from Vorsicht presaged a bad experience, but he was reasonably sure in this case Vorsicht wasn't about to discipline him.

"I will personally disembowel that prick Selfridge the moment he gets inside lunar orbit," Vorsicht announced to no one in particular, and everyone in the room was profoundly grateful that there was another target for his ire that day.

The control coordinator, Richard Turk, watched Vorsicht's hulk disappear toward the supraluminal communications room and unclenched. He had more reason than most to feel apprehension.

The comm room was dark, with arcane luminous devices punctuating the gloom, their inscrutable displays adding to the aura of mysticism in a place where physics was already routinely tortured. Vorsicht waited until he was right behind the signals officer to bark his instructions, and the man nearly levitated out of his seat.

"Signal for the _Venture Star_," Vorsicht began. "Basic encryption. Person-to-person, target: Parker Selfridge."

The officer read the sheet Vorsicht shoved at him, blanched at the language, and scanned it into the transceiver console. "Start synchronization cycle," he ordered, reading from the standard checklist.

A tech monitoring a console responded: "Syncing... TS one..." There were three states that had to be traversed before synchronization was complete, before the receiver even knew the transmitter was there.

"TS two..." Because the process was one of quantum particle entanglement, the states were known as _tangle states,_ and inevitably abbreviated.

"TS three..." With that, the transmitter was synchronized with the receiver on the _Venture Star,_ and the message could begin its tedious journey, one bit every twenty minutes.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

InterDev was, on the face of it, an asteroid mining startup. Beneath that front lay a research and development lab. But beneath _that_ layer, the effort was at heart an environmental activism organization. If "organized" was the right word. Spouses were routinely brought into the facility, to the nervousness of the security director. But they had a habit of turning into essential staff. Two examples were Erica Huang and June Dixon, and they were in the lab atrium discussing Erica's appointment to bridge crew when Sereda happened by.

"Ladies," he said gently, and they smiled.

"Dimitri, Erica and I were just talking about you," fibbed June, "and we think it's time there were some rules around here about when you can read minds. I mean, there are certain things that we just want to keep _secret_."

"But I don't—" protested Sereda, reddening, and they laughed. At that moment Virgil came in, surveyed the easy familiarity in the scene, and stiffened.

"June, they want you at the airport to train a new pilot," he said formally, never looking at Sereda, and turned on his heel and left.

Sereda looked from woman to woman. "Is there something here I should know about?"

"_No,_" said June firmly, and hurried away. Erica realized she was left alone in the awkwardness with Sereda, and took off after June.

* * *

Months passed before Enzo made a fateful announcement.

"I've got the ship," he said. The other men gave him their full attention. "She's the PRV _Saxa Voluta._"

"Planetary Reconnaissance? An asteroid mining scout?" asked Dixon.

"Yes. She was purchased by the molybdenum refining company MolStar, which is now a fully-owned subsidiary of InterDev."

The third man spoke. "When are you going to start putting the TL drive in?" It was Turk.

"She'll be in dry dock tomorrow. So, the day after," said Enzo.

"Victor, I—look, what is the point? You can't launch without IC, and we're no closer than when we started," said Dixon, wringing his hands.

The impossible had already been achieved, twice more, in the engineering labs of InterDev. First, they had translated Enzo's supraluminal communication breakthrough into a field drive they called transluminal, or TL, to avoid confusion with the supraluminal communicator. The transluminal could propel an object faster than light–if it had enough energy. It would take a _lot_ of energy to do that to a spaceship. The transluminal was an easy invention compared to coming up with something that would supply that kind of energy. Antimatter conversion wouldn't even come close, and that was theoretically two hundred percent efficient.

Dixon had finally hit the jackpot with an engine that could extract energy from the quantum vacuum, an omnipresent field carrying near infinite levels of energy. The subject of speculation for decades, the transluminal had actually been the key to unlocking this prize. The quantum vacuum energy extraction would _only_ work in combination with the TL. The only form that exotic energy could be transmuted into was the equally exotic form that created momentum in the TL field generators. This invention was not going to replace the power stations of Earth. But it was what they needed. Eventually, Dixon would receive the Nobel Prize for his discovery. However, for now, the engine had to be kept a secret.

But the quantum vacuum engine was a piece of cake compared to the inertia problem. The transluminal drive powered by the quantum vacuum engine could run a spaceship in the trans-Einsteinian regime past the speed of light, where theoretical guesses as to the maximum speed were all over the map. But getting up to the speed of light would still be subject to the laws of Newton and Einstein, and at one standard Earth gravity of acceleration, that would take a year.

"No," Enzo had said, and no one could argue with him. They needed a way to shield themselves against accelerations that would otherwise reduce the crew to stains on the bulkheads. Yet in the realm of physics, it was like trying to argue with 2 + 2 = 4.

"Look, Victor," Dixon began, appeasingly, reasonably, "Maybe this rescue effort is not the way to go. We could take the QV engine, license it for interstellar travel and become the richest corporation on the planet inside a year. We could swing public opinion against the RDA; we could buy our own ISV fleet and free Pandora within another six or seven years."

"No," said Enzo, with the finality that endeared him to some and irritated so many, including at that moment, Dixon, who lashed out.

"Why? Why do we have to do this now? It's about _her,_ isn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," snapped Enzo.

"Oh yes, you do. Everyone who sees the Pandora recording knows about _her_. And you made sure everyone saw the recording. It's part of your indoctrination plan."

"Virg—" began Turk with a rising tone of caution.

"Let him finish," said Enzo harshly.

"This is not about saving the Na'vi people as a culture. If it were about the big picture you wouldn't be driving everyone to do the impossible. You want to make sure you get there in time to save _Neytiri_." Dixon aimed his barb for the bullseye.

"Because...?" said Enzo, in a dangerously quiet voice.

"Oh, make me spell it out, will you? Fine. Because you fell for her. Just like Sully. What are you going to do about _him_ when you get there? You're not even the same species as he is now!"

"Virgil, that's enough!" said Turk urgently.

"It's okay, Richard," said Enzo, and he tensed, then relaxed. "Virgil here claims to read my mind. Nothing I can do about that. Everyone on this project has to make up his own mind about why he's here. Virgil, I'm not going to try and prove you wrong because where you are right now is beyond that kind of argument. I've got to go to a higher place.

"Virgil, you're not here because I twisted your arm. You didn't break two laws of physics because I browbeat you into it. You know what's going to happen to those people on Pandora when the _Dreadnought_ gets there. You can't sit here and live with yourself if you don't do everything you can, and you know it. You can stop it. This is about your own insecurity, your fear that you might not come up with the answer, and then you'd blame yourself for what happens to them, and you don't want to live with that. I know, because I go through the same thing every day.

"But this is bigger than that. You don't get an easy way out. I'm not letting you off the hook because you won't let yourself off the hook. And you can't. You want a pass from damnation, but you're the one doing the damning. You have only one hope for salvation, and you know what that is. You can't afford to distract yourself with this kind of negativity. Everyone here has only one job: To do whatever they can to get behind you. And that goes double for me. You're the only one who can do this. How can I serve you?"

At that, Dixon looked angry, then frightened, then with a spasm, fell against Enzo's shoulder and heaved a huge silent sob. Enzo said nothing, just held him. Shortly, without another word, Dixon left, a hundred pounds lighter.

Turk was appreciative. "For an engineer, you sure can get to someone. You did that just like Dimitri." Enzo bit his lip, and Turk was instantly contrite.

"I'm sorry. I'm an idiot."

Four weeks earlier Dimitri Sereda had been detained near an industrial park in Sumatra, and held on charges of fraud, subversion, and espionage. Since then he had been sitting in prison awaiting a trial no one was expecting to occur rapidly. Enzo dared not raise a diplomatic stink for fear of drawing media attention to their activities.

"It's nothing," said Enzo. "Richard," he began, changing the subject, "I want to revisit our discussion from the other day. I am going to need a decision soon."

Turk was quiet, looking down at his hands. Finally he spoke. "Victor... the answer is still No. Kathy is not ready to leave everything here behind. Neither am I. You don't even know that you're ever coming back." Unspoken was the much greater likelihood that the mission would result in the deaths of everyone on board. Turk grimaced wretchedly, conflicted between dueling loyalties. "I... I wish..."

Enzo took pity on the young man wringing his hands before him. "Everyone has their own path," he said. "Make peace with your choice, Richard. Your time will come."

Turk apologized again and left Enzo alone, where he contemplated his own insecurities.

Was Dixon right? Enzo reflexively asked himself whether he was making this effort, risking hundreds of lives, for the right reasons, for selfless reasons, again, and angrily buried the thought.

Just as he had every day since he saw the avatar recording.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The Tree of Voices was still a scar on the ground and its recovery time would be measured in generations. But a close relation to it was the _Utral 'Okä,_ the Tree of Memories, and it was there that Jake and Neytiri approached. Not with the heady anticipation and courtship dance they had enjoyed at the _Utral Aymokriyä,_ but with trepidation and hesitation. Their daughter Ni'awtu was left in the charge of the mothers of the tribe. This was not for a four year-old to witness.

"Of course, nothing may happen," whispered Neytiri, out of automatic respect for the ancestors in ethereal form around them. "Nothing at all."

"That's not why we're here," returned Jake, whispering only because Neytiri was doing so. "We _want_ this to work."

"This is where the sick in mind come for healing," said Neytiri. "Eywa knows, you are not sick."

"To the tribe, I might as well be," said Jake bitterly. "I am a stranger."

"Not to me. Not through _tsaheylu_."

Jake took his beloved's hands. "If you were the only one I had to win over..."

The die had already been cast; their conversation was an outlet for their ambivalence and fear. They sat at the base of the tree next to a thick luminous strand. This was how Na'vi with head injuries regained damaged memories. It was not a common procedure.

Jake made the bond between his queue and the strand. So did Neytiri. No words were spoken, but there was a conversation, of sorts, that followed:

_Eywa, hear us! All those who have passed before us, hear us! This is Jake, strong of deed, pure of heart. Grant him a vision of the People, we pray. A vision of the soul of the Omaticaya, that he may be one with them in memory as well as in spirit. Restore to him that which belongs to all of your people._

The rest of the exchange was beyond words.


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

There was a three-dee chart on Enzo's wall that he inspected every day. It showed the required velocity of a transluminal ship to beat the _Dreadnought_ to Pandora as a function of launch date and cruise interval. The first launch dates had already passed, and time was running out. Enzo had everything ready except the inertial compensator... and one other thing.

He could not make this journey without Dimitri.

Not out of personal reasons, but because of the effect that had manifested on that fateful day at Broadlawn. There had been no testing, and no opportunity for testing, a transluminal drive ship. Its operation was theoretical, in the domain of hope more than anything else. The supraluminal communicator breakthrough had been driven by the power of one mind focused on a new reality.

A power that had transformed the universe into that new reality.

To push a spaceship over that boundary would take another breakthough. The TL would operate above the speed of light, he was sure; and it would accelerate the ship under Newton-Einstein physics up to the speed of light. But there was an inconvenient singularity to traverse right _at_ the speed of light. The quantum vacuum engine could supply enough energy to get the ship's velocity so close to the speed of light that it would be within quantum tunneling range of exceeding it, a transition zone where the Newton-Einstein laws started breaking down. But, on paper at least, it would not have the energy to push the ship through the tunnel. There was only one hope for that, and it lay in the power of human belief. But they needed Sereda to harness that belief through his extraordinary talent.

They had to do a jailbreak.

* * *

Vorsicht studied the blueprints of the new engine room on the _Saxa Voluta_. He had kept tabs on Enzo after kicking him out of Broadlawn, and had not for a second bought the notion that Enzo had entered the asteroid mining business. _What is he hiding?_ was Vorsicht's instinctive reaction, and he had not found it hard to infiltrate Enzo's organization to find out the truth.

It never occurred to him that Enzo might have infiltrated his own organization.

Vorsicht knew about the transluminal drive, and it wasn't hard to guess what Enzo's goal was. But he also knew that Enzo would need inertial compensation, and he knew InterDev wasn't close to that. Especially since he had arranged for the Indonesian Empire to learn exactly who Dimitri Sereda was and what sort of impact he was having on their economy.

Vorsicht messaged more instructions to his team of moles on board the _Saxa Voluta_ and barged out of his office under Cheyenne Mountain, nearly knocking over his new operational security officer, Jerry Slidell.

* * *

Enzo stared at the chart on his wall as though he could change the curves on the screen with enough determination. By this date, they were up against every known and hypothesized performance limit of the transluminal drive. He wished he had Dimitri's unswerving belief in the power of deadline pressure. He placed his head in his hands.

Erica Huang, now his supraluminal communications officer, came to the open door and stopped herself just short of knocking. Eventually Enzo realized she was there. She risked a breach of etiquette and touched his shoulder.

"Erica, do you believe in miracles?" asked Enzo rhetorically.

Huang answered him anyway. "I've seen more than a few since I came here."

Enzo mumbled, "Not enough. One too few."

Huang couldn't think of anything to say.

Suddenly there was a commotion in the hall: a thundering of feet cascading toward him. Dixon slammed into the office, a dozen engineers at his heels.

"We've _done it!_– a field generator modifier–out of general relativity–the equations check out all the way to the transition zone—"

Enzo shot back from the desk. "Get the field model built _right now!_" He turned to Huang. "Start Operation Pegasus! _We're bugging out!_"


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Kathy Turk was in the logistics center with Tameka Rydberg when the announcement blared over the public address: "Operation Pegasus is _go!_ All ship's hands report to transfer stations. _This is not a drill!_"

Tameka locked eyes with Kathy. "Oh my God. I never thought they would do it."

"I did," said Kathy, with a far-off stare. "I've always felt... like we were rushing along a river towards a waterfall. Like there was nothing going to stop us from going over."

Tameka snapped her fingers in front of the other woman. "What is this 'we' stuff, white girl? You know you ain't coming. Or did you change your mind?" she asked hopefully. "I know we can make room. I got some pull there, being chief helm and all."

Kathy collected herself. "No, Tameka. It's too late. Richard has his own role in Pegasus and it's down here. It's too late to change. You know that."

"Yeah... I just had to ask, though. I guess this is it, then."

"Yes."

They embraced, for the last time.

* * *

A warm monsoon rain soaked the rusty bars that Dimitri Sereda stared at in meditation. On clear nights he had looked through them to the stars and imagined he could see the RDA orbital dock where the _Saxa Voluta_ resided. Enzo had gotten word of the ship to him through a guard that had been systematically bribed and coerced.

The port in the door scratched back and the same guard appeared.

"Hello, Rashid," acknowledged Sereda calmly.

The guard slid in, agitated. He threw a bundle of clothes at Sereda. "Change. Quick."

Minutes later they were riding in a fetid food service delivery van past steaming fields of jungle clearcut, finally pulling up at a deserted airstrip. Sereda emerged blinking into the light to see a man pass a bundle of banknotes to Rashid while a broad-shouldered associate toting an AR-15 surveyed the landscape.

The first man turned to Sereda with impatience. "Let's go, fella."

It was Dixon.

* * *

Eighty miles above them, the _Saxa Voluta_ was tethered to a berth in the vast complex that was the RDA's orbital dock and maintenance facility. Dozens of ships of all sizes were anchored within the dock, a network of modules connected by a web of carbon fibers defining a structure over twenty miles in diameter. The designated entrance and exit was a gap large enough for an interstellar vessel to pass through comfortably. It was also ringed with projectile launchers. The RDA's military leaning was never subtle.

Artificial intelligence engines governed the operation of much of the facility, as they had come to do on Earth over the last decade. They were as capable of making regulatory decisions as a human, and did not make mistakes. These devices were loaded with the regulations governing military and civilian spaceship safety and administration. The dock was the only such facility in orbit, so it was used of necessity also by non-RDA vessels, which paid a premium for its services.

Vorsicht had employed a simple artifice to ensure that the _Voluta_ didn't leave without his knowledge. He had ensured that it was docked in an ISV berth, which was rated only for interstellar vessels. The inexorably literal-minded AI engines would not allow a planetary reconnaissance vehicle to leave that class of dock without the same level of authority that it took to get it in there when–apparently–no other berths were free. A routine waiver, but it required a command level signature, a human in the loop.

What Vorsicht did not know was that the AIs were _too_ literal-minded. The regulations they were loaded with went all the way back to nineteenth century English naval law, and under certain circumstances, those would be the rules that were followed. Thanks to an exceptionally anal-retentive intern, Enzo _did_ know that, which was why, at that moment, a member of the English aristocracy sympathetic to the environmental movement was bobbing in a spacesuit next to the _Voluta_, clutching a bottle of champagne and repressing incipient nausea.

Lady Sylvia Salisbury-Lytton received her cue and opened a communication channel to the automated dockyard administrator. She recited ancient but familiar phrases, concluding with, "I name this ship the TLV _Spero_. May God bless her and all who voyage in her." _And may Eywa bless them too, _she thought as she hurled the bottle at the leading edge of the renamed vessel.

The AIs took note of the ceremony, checked their records, and flipped an administrative bit.

* * *

Someone else was suppressing motion sickness at that moment. Sereda was in the tight cabin of a single-stage-to-orbit Gulfstream XII. In front of him, the bulky man was flying the craft while Dixon rode shotgun. The plane had just started a series of violent evasive maneuvers.

"What's going on?" asked Sereda.

"Fighters," said the pilot crisply. "Ten miles behind and closing. June is falling back."

"Are they space-rated?" asked Dixon.

The pilot shrugged. "Can't take the chance."

Two miles behind them June Dixon was flying a similar vehicle, attempting to draw the fighters off. She was part of the rescue for this kind of contingency.

"I can't shake them," she reported. "One's staying on me, the other one is after you."

"Roger," said Dixon. He paused, looked at the pilot.

"No choice," said the other man. Dixon closed his eyes for a second.

"Close to five thousand feet separation," he said into the radio woodenly. "Draw them in."

There was a pause, then: "Understood," said June.

Dixon pulled a safety cover off a console between him and the pilot, and inserted a key in a peculiar device, turned it from the 'SAFE' position to 'ARM'. Sereda, aware of the charged atmosphere but not understanding the cause, allowed himself to pick up the other man's thoughts, and realized with a start what this machine was, and some of its properties.

"Does she know what will happen when this is activated inside the atmosphere?" he gasped.

"She knows," said Dixon, and viciously rounded on Sereda. "You had better be worth it," he spat.

Dixon pushed a button on the inertial compensator, and a penetrating thrum built up in the plane. Outside, a white spherical glow surrounded the craft, rapidly building in intensity and radius. Sereda opened his senses as widely as he could and reached behind them: _June_. He felt recognition. _Thank you_, he projected. There was a response, an unexpectedly urgent and complex message.

The fighter pilots, now within visual range of June and the Gulfstream, saw the glow turn to an actinic pulse. It was the last thing they saw before a hypersonic shockwave pulverized their planes and June's.

Dixon turned the IC off, and the Gulfstream began climbing and accelerating rapidly. In the cabin, Sereda lay prone, motionless, eyes glazed and fixed, oblivious as the sky outside gave way to space.


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Jake blinked, awake, and looked up to see Neytiri's eyes brimming with fear, tears, and hope. This was getting to be a habit, he thought.

"Jake! Oh, mah Jake! It has been so long. Are you all right? Speak to me! How do you feel?"

"Like a _latsi'evi_ after a round of _txskerum,_" blurted Jake.

Neytiri's eyes narrowed. "When did you see a game of _txskerum_, Jake?" she asked slowly.

"Well..." Jake furrowed his brow. "I'm sure I... no, wait..." He looked up. "Is this what it's like? Did it work? I don't feel any different. I think."

"We will find out, Jake."

In due course, they would find out. But it would take much longer to find out whether what made him _Jake_ was still there.

* * *

The Gulfstream entered the cargo hold of the _Spero_ and mated with the airlock. A medic and an orderly arrived with a stretcher for Sereda, no longer catatonic but incoherent. As they emerged into the transition deck, Enzo came in from the bridge and shouldered the orderly aside to look at his friend.

"Dimitri," he said, gripping Sereda's shoulder. "You're on the _Spero_."

Sereda's eyes started to focus. "I was... in her mind... when she went. I was there. I _saw_..."

"Dimitri!" urged Enzo. "We need you. _Now_." Sereda, staring into a terrible void visible only to him, made a heroic effort to return to the here and now. Just then, Dixon came past, and seeing him galvanized an immediate reaction in Sereda. He grabbed Dixon's hand, levered himself up from the stretcher to look intensely in Dixon's eyes.

"Virgil," he said, tendons rigid in his neck with effort. "She _told_ me... she forgives you."

Dixon's eyes widened, first in disbelief, then in comprehension. The medic insensitively asked, "For what?"

_For having an affair,_ thought Sereda.

No one answered the medic, but Enzo addressed him. "Get Sereda to the bridge."

"Sir, he needs to go to sick bay—"

"He needs to go to the bridge," ordered Enzo.

Sereda became aware of the frenzy of activity taking place around him. There were constant announcements over the intercom, ranging from the urgent: "All IC engineers to your stations on the double," to the pedestrian: "Lifeboat drill for rotation 'F', repeat, rotation Foxtrot." He recognized Erica Huang's voice. It brought him closer back to reality.

"I'm okay," he reassured the medic. "Just get me to the bridge."


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

In the end it was sheer coincidence that undid their plans. In the Cheyenne Mountain center, Jerry Slidell had hastily arranged to be on duty, clearing vehicles for exit from the space dock complex. Anything coming or going without permission risked decimation from the artillery surrounding the exit. The RDA was simple-minded when it came to compliance.

"TLV _Spero_ requesting clearance for exit, flight plan to Ceres Base on file," came over the speakers.

Slidell winced slightly. "_Spero_, clearance granted," he replied. On board the _Spero,_ the assistant helm officer who had made the transmission winked at Rydberg: _My little joke_.

The next leg of the coincidence unfolded. Vorsicht was in the control room, on an unplanned visit. He turned to his adjutant and said, with what passed for humor, "Another goddamn abbreviation? I swear they're making them up for the hell of it. What the fuck is a 'TLV'?"

And the final phase of the coincidence fell into place. AIs were used for numerous tasks in the control facility, but they almost never spoke. On this occasion, however, one of them heard a question, consulted its databases, and decided that it alone possessed the answer. So it told them.

"TLV: ABBREVIATION REGISTERED SEVENTEEN MINUTES AGO. DESIGNATION: _TRANSLUMINAL VESSEL_."

Vorsicht paused at the swinging exit doors. Blood drained from his face as comprehension dawned. He raced back to the consoles.

"Show me the berth of the _Voluta!_"

A tech punched up video on the giant screen. Everyone could see that the berth was empty, save for a small structure they couldn't identify. Vorsicht's eyes bulged.

"Get me Stanton!" he barked, ordering a direct connection to his chief mole on the _Voluta_. A face appeared on the screen.

"Stanton, what the fuck is going on?"

"I'm on lifeboat drill, sir."

"With who?"

Stanton listed some names, and Vorsicht turned purple as he realized that the list exactly matched the moles he had planted. He also realized what the structure on the screen was: They had left their lifeboat behind. He turned to Slidell.

"Lock exit guns on that ship. Open fire. Turn that thing into slag."

Slidell swallowed, then stood to attention. "No, sir."

Vorsicht did a double take. "What. The. Fuck."

Slidell stared straight ahead. "Sir, I answer to a higher authority. There are many of us, and we will hold the RDA accountable. We are bringing the truth to the people."

Vorsicht looked resigned. "Well, I guess I don't have any choice, do I?" He pivoted, whipping out his sidearm, and fired at Slidell, a double tap through the chest. Slidell had time only to register surprise before he slid to the floor.

And time to push a button on the comm console.

Vorsicht holstered his weapon. "Anyone else want to meet a higher authority?" The room was frozen, until two technicians carried Slidell's body away from the console and a third took his place.

Vorsicht spoke to the replacement with exaggerated politeness. "Mister, would you be so good as to direct your weapons on the vessel _Saxa Voluta_ and blow it to pieces?"

The tech studied his display and replied, in a shaking voice. "Sir, weapons are locked out at the master console." He turned to address the control coordinator at the master console.

Richard Turk was looking at Slidell and saw the expression of surprise frozen on his face. _He didn't know Vorsicht would do that._ Turk realized that the tech was looking at him, as was everyone else. The override authority for firing the dock guns was controlled from his console. All he had to do was turn a key in front of him from SAFE to ARM and the technician would take over and destroy the _Spero_.

"Sir?" queried the tech. Vorsicht was staring at Turk, starting to walk over.

"This isn't what I signed up for," thought Turk. He paused for a split second–and an eternity longer than planned–then he wrenched the key all the way _left_ to OFF, and broke it flush with the lock while screaming into his mike.

"_Spero,_ you are _go_ for TLI–_Transluminal Injection! GODSPEED!"_

He didn't even feel the two bullets that hit him in the chest. He did not look surprised.

Aboard the _Spero,_ they had been listening with growing horror to everything happening in the control room after Slidell opened the comm channel to them as his last act. But they had no clue what Turk had done.

"All stop. Reverse course," announced Rydberg unsteadily.

"Belay that order!" shouted Enzo.

"But—"

"He said we're clear! Maintain course!"

In RDA control, the tech studied the master console and ordered, "Get me a diamond drill," while Vorsicht fumed. Cheryl Pyle, a sympathizer and friend of Turk, held his dying body as he struggled to speak.

"Cheryl... Tell Victor... it was my time. … Tell Kathy ... it was worth it."

Aboard the _Spero,_ no one breathed as they passed through the exit portal. Immediately, the ship pitched over and dove for the southern hemisphere. Their plans for a stealthy getaway blown, commands rang out with staccato urgency: "Course is right ascension, 14 hours 39 minutes, 36.4951 seconds—"

Enzo paged Dixon in the engine room: "I need IC on line _now!_"

"—declination negative 60 degrees 50 minutes, 2.308 seconds!"

Dixon answered: "We're still calibrating and balancing. We can't engage yet."

"Is the TL working?"

"Yes."

Enzo thought fast. _Get out of here. _"Give me one gee, now!"

People scrambled at the intercom announcement: "All hands, secure for immediate acceleration!" Suddenly there was _up_ and _down_.

Enzo thought furiously. _We lost surprise. What do we do now? _He called Dixon again. "How much power can you spare before we engage the IC?"

Dixon shrugged, busy. "Anything you want."

Enzo spun towards Huang. "Light up T-1 through T-5!"

Under Cheyenne Mountain, the atmosphere was already brittle with Vorsicht's fury when a tech announced urgently: "Sir, receiving a transmission!" and put it on the speakers.

"This is the starship _Spero_ broadcasting on all public terrestrial gateway channels and transmitting high resolution telemetry on K-A band twelve. _We are going to light speed_—"

Vorsicht screamed, "Shut him down! Jam that signal!" The comm tech did not try to tell him that the _Spero_ was now pouring over half a billion watts of radio power into a cone encompassing the Earth.

Another tech piped up: "His course is Pandora, sir."

"Of course it's fucking Pandora, where else would it be!"

"—_We will bring back proof_—"

The tech swallowed. "Sir, _inbound_ along the same course–the _Venture Star_–range to target 170,000 kilometers, closest approach under one thousand kilometers."

"Why didn't you say so! Get Selfridge!"

Parker Selfridge was swapping jokes with the crew in the control room when the call from the new controller was routed to him. "PRV-class ship accelerating towards you at one gee. Launch shuttle and intercept at all costs."

Selfridge gave a languid evaluation. "A PRV at one gee? That's imposs—"

Vorsicht grabbed the mike. "They're _doing _it, you idiot! You've got five minutes to get the Valkyrie launched! Ram that thing if you have to, because I do not want to see your face outside of a morgue if you fail."

Selfridge blanched and his testicles momentarily retracted. "Understood." He addressed Galloway. "Get the Valkyrie ready. I'll be going along. Who's a weapons officer?"

"Me," volunteered Mallory.

"Deal," said Selfridge.

Enzo gnawed a fingernail. The _Spero_ was making only one gee away from Earth and he was worried that Vorsicht would locate a particle beam weapon that could reach them. But any error in configuring the inertial compensator would result in them being crushed when the TL was switched to higher acceleration. In the number two seat by him, Sereda was steadily recovering and starting to assess the mental state of the crew.

The Valkyrie shuttle was launched in record time and drew within 500 kilometers of the _Spero,_ close enough to launch a missile. "They're not showing any signs of detecting us, sir," observed Galloway.

"Great. Mallory, do you mind if I push the firing button myself? I've always been a hands-on kind of manager," said Selfridge. Mallory slowly turned around from the weapons console.

"You had to come along, didn't you?" he said bitterly.

Selfridge's eyes widened at the sight of the pistol in his hand. "Mallory... _Isaac, _what the hell?"

"You couldn't keep your nose out. Well, park yourself over there for a while, Parker. We're all going to sit this out."

Minutes ticked by. Galloway, within the line of fire, made no move. Selfridge grew increasingly desperate. What Vorsicht would do to him if the _Spero_ escaped was not in doubt. Competing self-preservation instincts battled within him until there was a winner. He lunged at Mallory, groping for the pistol. The brief struggle, almost comical in zero gravity, ended when two shots rang out from the contested weapon. Selfridge was startled enough for Mallory to wrest the gun back. He panted, training the pistol on Selfridge again.

"Give me an excuse, Selfridge, just one more." He became aware of a stream of droplets. Red droplets. Blood. But who...? Then he saw: Galloway floating insensibly in his harness, a hole in his temple.

"You bastard," he snarled. "That was a good man. He was one of us. There would have been a weapon systems failure, no one's fault. No one had to die."

_Vorsicht wouldn't have gone for that excuse, _thought Selfridge.

Mallory was still panting. Why were those blood droplets moving so uniformly? Then he saw where the other bullet had gone: A neat hole in the forward window. Well, that rather limited their choices.

Selfridge saw it too. "We can patch it," he pleaded.

"So you can fire the missile? If you come home from this alive without destroying the _Spero,_ Vorsicht will kill you. Me, I'm already dead. So that leaves us with only one choice." Mallory leaned back, the gun never wavering.

Selfridge begged, bargained, cajoled, to no effect. With his free hand, Mallory opened a comm channel.

Huang broke in on Enzo's deliberations. "Sir, you have to hear this." Mallory's voice came over the speakers.

"Spero, this is Isaac Mallory. The Valkyrie shuttle in your path is no longer a threat."

The bridge crew stiffened. In all their frantic attention focused on dangers behind them, they had never even looked in front. Mallory identified himself positively as the supplier of the avatar recordings. Enzo started to thank him, but Mallory cut him off.

"I need only one thing."

"Name it."

"I want you to give Jake Sully a message."

The bridge was silent but for the instruments. They listened while Mallory spoke.

Enzo replied firmly. "I will tell Sully. I swear it."

"Thank you." Mallory rested slightly against the shuttle console, his breath coming a little harder.

Selfridge spoke up. "Now what?"

Mallory smiled thinly. "We're going to watch a ship make the first light-speed run in history."

Dixon barreled onto the bridge of the _Spero,_ heading directly to the engineering console, oblivious to everything but the calculations cascading in his head, and paged the engine room. "Transfer command to my console."

Enzo held his breath. Dixon would not have come up unless—

Dixon turned and spoke. "IC is ready for testing."

"Engage IC," ordered Enzo. There was a brief pause, and then a slight hum and a console readout was all the indication they had that the inertial compensator was running. The protocol called for a gradual raising of the acceleration, over an extended period that was based on the assumption that their departure had not been detected. Enzo knew they no longer had that luxury. _Go for broke._

"One hundred gees, now."

Rydberg said a quick prayer, and manipulated her console. No one breathed. Then the numbers flashed on the central display. They were accelerating, fast. The crew started executing checklists prepared during months of training, and overlapping exchanges again rang out, more urgently. "Verify my course! Right ascension—" "Calibrating image array—" "—42.948754 seconds, declination minus sixty-two degrees—"

Cheyenne Mountain saw the bridge pictures and the telemetry as well. "Holy Cow," breathed a controller.

"It's faked. It's got to be," said Vorsicht, with false conviction.

The comm chief shook his head. "Sir, L-5 just got a radar return. It's real."

Enzo did a quick mental calculation. They had to move faster. "One thousand gees."

Rydberg paused just long enough for a red light to turn yellow, then executed the command. The crew was thrown off guard and then began executing their checklists at breakneck speed to keep up with the new pace.

Sitting on the floor against a console, Cheryl Pyle whispered into Richard Turk's ear, tears streaming down her face. "They're doing it. _They're doing it._" Hoping that her words could travel across a barrier more final and impermeable than the speed of light.

"Ten thousand gees," ordered Enzo, and the crew buckled down for the final phase of the acceleration maneuver. This was it.

"Imaging target," sang out a junior member. Enzo started to interrupt her, since she was executing a protocol that was planned for a more leisurely departure and was at best optional, but Sereda laid a hand on his arm. "Occluding," went on the intern, and a fuzzy image on the main display changed with her words. "Magnifying... identifying." A large yellow circle appeared on the screen, vanished, revealing a tiny blue speck that grew clearer as the _Spero_ tapped into long baseline optical interferometry to look far ahead of her. "Stand by for final course correction: 0.2 nanoradians—"

A readout appeared on the screen under the blue dot. "IDENTIFICATION: ALPHA CENTAURI C—2—V. DESIGNATION: _PANDORA_." The blue dot wobbled, then moved to the center of the screen.

There was an audible sucking in of breath. Enzo could swear he felt the _Spero_ buck and accelerate. He looked at Sereda, who smiled. "The crew... they _believe_."

Huang put a transmission from Cheyenne Mountain through to Enzo. "Enzo, this is your last chance. Return to Earth orbit and I won't blow your ship out of the sky," shouted Vorsicht. Enzo figured it for a bluff and said nothing. "Do they know why you're doing it?" went on Vorsicht, more pointedly. "Do they know this is all about that blue slut?"

Enzo's stomach flipped. _How the hell...?_

Huang saw his discomfort. "Shall I shut it off, sir?" she asked.

Enzo regained his composure. Vorsicht must have had intel on his conversation with Dixon. Vorsicht didn't get where he was without knowing how to push people's buttons. There was nothing to be gained from this conversation any more. "Yes," he responded.

They were now the fastest humans in history, traveling at 0.87 times _c,_ the speed of light, and a readout appeared on the bridge screen showing speed among other measurements. There was another buck in the acceleration. Enzo looked sharply over at Sereda, who was in a half-trance, channeling the emotions, hopes, and desires of the whole crew into a mental connection with the transluminal drive.

"Is it enough?" said Enzo, asking about the energy required to make the speed of light jump.

"I wouldn't miss this for anything," replied Sereda obliquely.

"Engine reserves are at eighty percent," Dixon said, referring to the stored energy that catalyzed the quantum vacuum extraction process.

The numbers climbed higher, slowing down: 0.9 _c_... 0.99 _c_... 0.999 _c_. There was a rumble in the ship that magnified into violent shaking, getting worse.

"Stabilize heading!" yelled Enzo, gripping his seat.

"Heading _is_ stable, vibration is all on-axis!" snapped Dixon. "Engine reserves now eighteen percent."

0.9999 _c_. On a side console next to Enzo was a metal handle with a key next to it. He turned the key from SAFE to ARM and gritted his teeth.

0.9999999 _c_. "Engine reserves at two percent... one percent..." said Dixon. The speed on the display shifted slightly, but it was not at the target, the speed close enough to _c_ to quantum tunnel past it. Enzo looked at Dixon, who shook his head. Enzo balled his fist. How could they have come so close and still not make it? They were only a tiny fraction of _c_ away from the point where they would be within quantum tunneling range of exceeding it. It was Zeno's Paradox and Einstein's revenge. They were doomed to come within the smallest possible distance of their goal without making it.

But if they were _that_ close to the quantum tunneling speed... _they were within quantum tunneling distance of it._ Enzo and Sereda looked at each other and both men had the same thought. Sereda closed his eyes and thought: _Push_.

Suddenly a siren blared. The main screen was flashing the sign "TRANSITION ZONE," and a line on a stripchart started climbing. Dixon came alive, electrified by his console's readings.

"Engine reserves are recovering! We're following the model–now at fifty percent, sixty-five–_stand by, stand by_–ninety-two, ninety-five, ninety-nine–_Go!_"

Enzo jammed his fingers against the handle and smashed it past the stop.

_PUSH_.


	12. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Aboard the Valkyrie, Selfridge was unconscious, but Mallory was grimly holding on for one final sight. There was a prediction that a massive object hitting the speed of light in space would generate Cherenkov radiation as a result of exceeding the infinitesimally smaller local speed of light in the not-quite-vacuum of interplanetary space. Straining to look along the path of the _Spero,_ Mallory, fearful of blinking, finally saw what he had been waiting for: a flash of white light, exactly where the _Spero_ was. Or had been, until then.

Mallory sank back and let oblivion overtake him.

* * *

Under Cheyenne Mountain, the controllers and techs had seen the images and telemetry from the _Spero_ until just before it entered the transition zone, when transmissions ceased. The last recorded speed was a decimal point followed by as many nines as the display precision allowed.

Vorsicht stared blackly, silent. He abruptly left the control room and headed to the supraluminal communications center.

* * *

Enzo was trapped. He was in a void absent all light and sound, falling endlessly, no sensation at all. _Heaven?_ he wondered. _Or hell?_ Or worse? Even being flagellated by a pitchfork-carrying demon would be better than this complete lack of... anything. Nothing could be worse than this.

Then it got worse.

In front of his eyes appeared the flashing word, "RECONFIGURING." It was his old nightmare. It had been a foreshadowing, a message from the future so powerful it had traveled in time, tunneled back to his earlier self, a warning from this point: _Don't come here_.

A warning he had ignored. The word was exactly as it had been in his nightmare. Was this his punishment, Enzo wondered? What had he done that deserved this? Was everyone else on the _Spero_ now trapped in their own version of this? What would become of Pandora and the Na'vi?

And Neytiri?

Enzo found a place inside of calm, a small ball of centeredness and self-acceptance that he focused on. _Whatever my feelings about Neytiri,_ he realized, _I did the right thing, for the right reasons._

Then suddenly, the word changed: "RECALIBRATING."

That wasn't part of his nightmare.

Light and sound crashed in simultaneously and Enzo felt a seat under his backside again. The word was on the main bridge display and the instruments and lighting had just snapped on. Then a table of figures appeared on the display: Time on target, speed, and more.

The time in transit was at three years and rocketing downward. Tameka Rydberg found her voice and opened the intercom.

"_Cel _two decimal four!" she yelled, coining a new unit.

Enzo swung to look at Huang. Her protocol at this point had one and only one priority: Get a message to Earth. Let them know we did it. Enzo didn't say anything, but his face said it all: _It takes only one bit to change the universe._

Huang shook her head. "Lost sync when we entered the transition zone."

"Cel five decimal eight! Cel _ten!_"

"Oh my God," one of the helm crew said. Someone else was crying.

Enzo turned to Dixon. "Virgil, what's our maximum speed?" The engineer shrugged, still overawed. Enzo poked him. "Pretend like you know, chief." Someone giggled, and a group of people who had not taken a breath in a long time exhaled at once.

"Cel one hundred–_we are leaving the solar system!_"

The cheer from the lower decks resounded in the bridge.

Enzo was thinking about Vorsicht's intentions and options. "I've got to have all the speed you can give me," he said to Dixon.

The engineer answered. "I don't know what her top speed is, so I have to gauge it by the draw on the engine reserves. We're at eighty-two percent right now."

They reached cel two hundred before Dixon called a halt to the acceleration. "Engine reserves are at fifty percent."

"But that means you should be able to go twice as fast!"

"You want enough energy left to _stop_ this thing, don't you?"

Enzo shut up.

* * *

Approaching Pandora, the ISV _Dreadnought_ started receiving a supraluminal transmission. It did not employ any of the speed codes; it was describing an unanticipated situation. The message would take a long time to arrive.


	13. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

They had a week in transit to work out strategy. That left plenty of time for argument.

"So this is the plan? And I thought going to light speed would be the hard part," said Dixon sarcastically. They had just gone over their options, based on the assumption that the _Dreadnought_ would be alerted to their approach.

"You have an alternative?" snapped Enzo testily. He was angry with himself for relying too much on the element of surprise. He should have taken the risk to acquire more weapons.

Dixon was contrite. "I'm sorry, that came out wrong. Everyone will support the plan a hundred percent. Insane though it is." He changed the subject. "Oh, before I forget: we've identified the cause of the shaking approaching the transition zone." This was a serious investigation; the shaking had torn many fixtures loose and everyone was afraid of systems failure when they made the reverse transition.

"And?" prompted Enzo, since Dixon was clearly relishing the moment.

"Rounding error. The IC controller was programmed with quad floating point precision. When it got to the ridiculous numbers a gnat's ass away from _c,_ the rounding errors translated to transient accelerations. The old Saturn Five had a similar problem, they called it 'pogoing.' Different cause, of course."

"So what do we do about it?" asked Sereda.

Dixon responded. His old animosity to Sereda had abated. "We just switch to an octo precision library. Problem solved." Dixon enjoyed the simple solutions.

Later, Sereda took advantage of a quiet period to broach an awkward topic alone with Enzo.

"Victor, what are your plans for Pandora after we beat off the _Dreadnought?_ As in long-term?"

Enzo knew there had to be more to Sereda's thinking behind this question, and answered carefully.

"We'll leave a rotating guard on site, of course," he began, "On a voluntary basis. We get word back to Earth. We can ferry video back much faster than the supraluminal and show people what's really going on, get public opinion on our side."

"And yourself?" asked Sereda. "You would return, or stay?"

"Stay," said Enzo quickly. A little too quickly.

Sereda caught it. "For how long?" he asked quietly.

Enzo was silent for a long time before answering. "Forever," he whispered.

"Victor, you know... you may want to live with them–heck, I think we all do; look at Sully–but you are not a Na'vi."

"I'm not looking to become one of them like Sully–I'm not as young as him! I'm going to live as a visitor, an observer."

"You can't be just an observer, Victor. You're human. You have human culture in your genes and steeped through your brain. You can't not affect them. Just talking about technology could upset their homeostasis, their relationship with Eywa. Ancient explorers of the New World gave the natives smallpox; you could give them a virus of the mind."

"I'm hardly the first human to be around them. Grace Augustine taught them English, for God's sake."

"Yes, but they knew the RDA was the enemy. But if you save the tribe, they may not have their guard up. You would be infiltrating them as an _agent provocateur_ without them or even you realizing it."

Enzo sighed. "I thought one of your jobs was to improve morale."

Sereda looked at him steadily. "This is what it boils down to: Do you care enough about the Na'vi to leave them alone?"

Enzo did not answer.

* * *

Jake lay in the hammock with Neytiri. She had finally fallen asleep, but it would take much longer for him. He tried to make sense of what had happened since their bold experiment at the _Utral 'Okä,_ but his thoughts flowed like molasses.

Jake now had fragmented memories of a thousand Na'vi lifetimes, ricocheting around his head like a flock of _yayo_ surprised by a _toruk,_ but they were not integrated. He was surfacing memories without knowing whether they belonged to him or an ancestor of the Omaticaya. It had not helped him build rapport with the tribe, and now he was being challenged for the leadership by Txur´itan, a brave and ambitious warrior.

For several reasons, his head hurt. He looked into the night sky, and saw a twinkling dot move rapidly across the star field.

They had visitors.


	14. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

One week after the escape from Earth, the _Spero_ was arriving at Pandora, and the timing left no margin for error. The ship decelerated, approaching the light speed boundary from the other direction. They were timing the transition to be as close to Pandora as possible.

Rydberg called out the numbers."Cel one decimal two … one decimal one … stand by—"

"Engine reserves at one percent," added Dixon, with an I-told-you-so glance at Enzo.

The main viewscreen, showing only numbers up until this point, convulsed and started displaying a starfield.

Everyone had rehearsed their jobs. Enzo wheeled toward Huang, who had just one. _It takes only one bit to change the universe._

"Supraluminal is coming online!" she announced.

"Position established," said Rydberg. "Scanning ahead for the _Dreadnought_."

"Ready to fire," said the weapons tech. He would fire their complement of two armored smart missiles at the ISV _Dreadnought_ as soon as it was located. Each was programmed to seek out a Valkyrie shuttle.

"Starting SL synchronization."

"I have the _Dreadnought!_"

"Missiles away!"

"Missile _inbound!_ Time to impact, forty-five seconds!"

Enzo: "Retask one of ours. Intercept!"

"TS_ one!_"

"Inbound is defending itself … our missile destroyed!"

Enzo cursed. "Send our other missile after it."

"TS_ two!_"

"Time to impact, twenty seconds!"

"TS_ three!_"

"Closing … ten seconds …"

"Inbound destroyed!"

"_Bit one is away!_"

The exchange had taken less than a hundred seconds. But what were they going to do about the shuttles on the _Dreadnought_ now? As they decelerated towards Pandora, the image of the ISV clarified.

There were no shuttles attached.

They were too late. The attack had already started.

Victor turned to ask Dimitri for advice, but the question died on his lips. Dimitri was staring into the distance, wide-eyed, tears pouring down his cheeks, his expression unfathomable. Victor put a hand on his shoulder.

"It's her, Victor," said Dimitri, in a voice a thousand years old. "It's Eywa. _I feel her._"

"From _here?_"

"She's _everywhere_. She's _beautiful_. I can't begin to … if only you could feel this."

Huang picked up and decoded signals from the _Dreadnought_. It had launched its two Valkyries already: One was to land ground forces, the other to bomb the largest concentrations of Na'vi. They had duplicated Colonel Quaritch's plans without realizing it: RDA tacticians were not very creative. From the reports, the first shuttle had already landed and was engaging the Na'vi with devastating results.

They had failed.


	15. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

The second Valkyrie was dipping into the cloud layer. "Time on target, three minutes," announced the navigator.

The co-pilot peered ahead. "Going to rely on instruments for the final run," he said.

Suddenly, the comm officer pulled off his headset. "You gotta hear this," he said.

A transmission flooded the cabin speakers. "RDA shuttle, you have thirty seconds to reverse course and surrender. This is your final warning."

The pilot and co-pilot exchanged glances: _Huh?_

"Someone got a transistor radio for Christmas," joked the pilot. They stayed on course.

"What is that?" said the co-pilot, straining to look at an object ahead of them in the clouds. "It looks like ... a _Gulfstream?_"

A sphere of white light grew around the craft in front of them and there was a pulse.

"Bogey destroyed," said Dixon unnecessarily. Enzo was flying the vehicle and was getting ready to return to the _Spero_ when an alarm went off.

"Engine cut-off!" he shouted. "We're going down."

Dixon studied the instruments. "Fuck," he said. "The scramjets on a Gulfstream can't handle a carbon dioxide atmosphere. Who'd have thought?"

Enzo looked frantically for a landing area. There were no clearings. "I have to ditch in the river," he said.

A few klicks away, the battle was not going well for the defenders. The force they were up against was much larger than the one they had repelled six years earlier. A small group of Na'vi and its leader, Txur´itan, fought valiantly against a squad of infantry in AMP suits armed with GAU-90 autocannons, but with half of their number killed or fatally wounded, they were falling back toward the river. The squad leader, Zeb Briggs, gave the order to pursue and annihilate.

The _Spero_ was now in orbit around Pandora, and Sereda was barely conscious of the bridge crew. His mind was consumed with the glorious immensity of Eywa. Something like a conversation was taking place between the two as they established common reference points for communication.

"And _this_ … is the shame and the beauty of the human heart," thought Sereda, and held in his mind a thought-picture of all that it meant to be human.

There was acknowledgement, understanding, greater rapport. Then Sereda received an image of what was happening to the creatures and plants connected to Eywa, their agony, the pain being inflicted on them by the invaders, the desecration. He wept, for Eywa, for the Na'vi, and for his own species.

There was empathy, compassion, consolation.

There was an idea.

Through the connection with Eywa, Sereda's thoughts, vastly amplified, reached out to the humans on Pandora. Not to hurt, not to hinder, not to halt.

To heal.

Briggs and his squad crashed through the jungle, relishing the bloodbath to come. They had Txur´itan's band glowing on their scanners and were closing fast. Briggs rounded a large tree and saw one of the blue devils quivering under a root, ready to launch a suicidal leap against his armored bulk. He raised the GAU-90, the safety already off.

_This is wrong,_ he thought.

What? Where had that come from? He shook his head, and prepared to fire, but instead he was drawn into a vision of his childhood, a time when he had cared, cared about his pet rabbit, only to find one day that his father had gotten drunk and wrung its neck, then decided to turn it into stew, laughing as he told his son to eat it. The young Briggs had made a decision that day, a reasonable decision for an eight year-old, but not the best decision he could have made. He saw that now, from a higher perspective than he had ever had before in his life. Instantly the vision was replaced with another situation, similar, from a year later, and he was whisked again at lightning pace through this and dozens more turning points that had taken him down a path that led to bloodthirsty mercenary.

And now he didn't want to do that any more, he realized. He had caused untold pain. He put the safety on his GAU-90. The Na'vi seized the moment and desperately hurled himself at the AMP-suit, bouncing off. Briggs looked around and saw the other members of his squad securing their weapons, looking back at him with expressions that he had never seen before on their faces. He didn't know how, but for the first time, he felt he was truly _seeing_ them.

All over the battlefield, soldiers were sheathing their weapons and falling back, grouping into a defensive formation heading to the shuttle landing zone.

The Gulfstream ended its glide into the river and pancaked on the water's surface gently, thanks to the low gravity. Dixon and Enzo had time to don exopacks before the plane started taking on water, and they swam to the bank.

"This wasn't the way I'd planned on arriving," panted Enzo, "but at least we're not hurt." He wished they had a radio that could reach the _Spero_. At least they had had time to send an SOS from the stricken plane.

Dixon snapped to attention. "Not _yet_." Enzo followed his stare and saw three Na'vi _tsamsiyu_ approaching, spears menacing. Why were they making no effort to conceal themselves, he wondered, and before he could figure it out, he and Dixon felt points stabbing their backs. They turned and saw two more warriors that had materialized behind them and held wicked _aystal_ near their throats.

They were roughly herded toward a tall, bloodied warrior. They did not know it, but this was Txur´itan. For the first time, Enzo regretted not learning the Na'vi language. He had been singlemindedly focused on engineering. So had Dixon. But one thing was obvious: If the Na'vi had wanted them dead, they would already be dead. The natives had left their exopacks on. There was hope.

The hope faded as they came into a clearing where several of the natives had gone ahead to prepare what looked like a crucifixion. Enzo and Dixon were trussed to a framework of branches. From the fury on the faces of the tribe, it was evident that death was on the agenda, and that they had been left alive so that they could experience a particularly painful one.

"Listen, we weren't the ones who attacked you," shouted Enzo desperately. "We came to save you. We _rescued—_"

He was cut off as a female warrior whipped off his exopack, expertly gagged him, then put the exopack back on. Dixon's protestations were similarly cut short.

The natives piled dry brush around them.

Enzo struggled, realizing what was coming. But it was to no avail; there was no escaping the taut bonds. He saw several children come into the clearing. There was a lot of movement going on around them. Evidently they were about to become a spectacle.

An adult moved to shoo the children out of the scene, but while her back was turned, one of them broke away from the group and came over to the pair of humans. It was a girl, very young, innocence still unsullied even by war. She approached them and cocked her head.

Enzo looked down at her from the scaffold and wished desperately that he had some of Dimitri's abilities. _I came to help,_ he thought, looking at the girl's soulful eyes. _I came so far_.

The girl looked back at him with a tenderness that pierced Enzo's heart, and time stood still. She spoke.

"_Oel ngati kameie_."

She ran off. Enzo saw her trying to get the attention of the tall Na'vi, who waved her off. The girl stood her ground, and there was an angry dispute between several of the adults. Enzo and Dixon could see her pointing back at them. One of the warriors left the clearing.

Time passed. The tall one paced and stared malevolently at them. Their bonds tightened. The warrior returned, with company. As the girl joined the newcomers and they approached the pyre, Enzo's pulse quickened. One of them was familiar... it was... yes!

Jake Sully stopped and looked at Enzo. He paused, and then smiled.

"I believe you've already met my daughter."

Enzo and Dixon were cut down. As soon as he could speak, Enzo addressed Sully.

"I have a message for you from Isaac Mallory."


	16. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

Later, there was a more formal welcome for the crew of the _Spero_ as they were led into the Omaticaya village. Now the Na'vi were smiling at them. Enzo and Sereda were at the head of the column, and they halted as Txur´itan approached them hesitantly. Whatever he said, Enzo could not understand, but then, in a flowing motion, the tall warrior bent and kneeled in front of him. A lump came to Enzo's throat. He wouldn't have known what to say even if he spoke the language.

They approached the village, where Jake was waiting for them _inside_ the largest tree they had ever seen.

And there was someone at his side. A frisson of electricity went up Enzo's spine as he recognized Neytiri.

And just as quickly, it left. He wasn't in love with her, he realized. He had had to come four and a quarter light years to find that out, but now he knew. He was here not because of her but because of her people, her planet, and what they were: Something ancient and familiar that he had lost before he was born, and now he had it back.

And he would make sure nothing ever threatened it again.

* * *

Hours later, Jake excused himself from the celebration. Sereda noticed, and followed, to find Jake swallowing a purple paste.

Jake noticed the man. "Headache," he explained.

"I know," said Sereda. He was becoming less willing to beat about the bush as his talents grew. "It must hurt to have a thousand souls struggling to be recognized inside your head."

Jake's eyes widened. He found himself explaining a great deal to this man who already seemed to know everything, and in turn, he learned a lot about Sereda.

"May I help?" Sereda said simply, and, agreeing, Jake found the clamor in his brain calming, the chaos becoming ordered, the cacophony quieting, His thoughts were once again his own, his memories his servants instead of his master.

And another destiny was fulfilled.


	17. Epilogue

**Epilogue: Forty-one years later**

Quick now, here, now, always—  
A condition of complete simplicity  
(Costing not less than everything)  
And all shall be well and  
All manner of thing shall be well  
When the tongues of flame are in-folded  
Into the crowned knot of fire  
And the fire and the rose are one.

— T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding," _Four Quartets_

In his beloved forest, the white-haired Enzo was reclining in a bed of giant leaves thoughtfully folded into a cushion by Ni'awtu, his daily companion for the last few years since Dimitri had died. Her own children were now grown up and she was more than happy to serve the savior of the tribe.

Overhead, Enzo saw the steady glow of a spaceship orbiting Pandora. It was one of a dozen environmental blockade ships, a peacekeeping force in place to ensure that nothing disturbed the ecology and people of Pandora again. The RDA had ceased to be an effective force from the time the _Dreadnought's_ crew arrived back on Earth in the _Spero,_ dedicated to the environmental cause and bearing dramatic video of Pandora.

On the outside of the wall surrounding Hell's Gate stood a shining memorial, headed: "They Gave Their Lives For a World They Never Touched." Underneath, the list was headed by Jerry Slidell, Richard Turk, and June Dixon. An adjacent memorial featured the names Trudy Chacon, Grace Augustine, and Isaac Mallory. While few Na'vi children knew any English, all of them knew every name on both lists. Four and a quarter light years away, exact replicas of the memorials stood at the outskirts of the Amazon rainforest rehabilitation project.

Enzo groaned slightly. "Can I get you anything?" asked Ni'awtu solicitously.

"No," he answered, "I'm just … a little tired."

She sat with him for a period that might have been minutes or hours. She knew what was happening. Enzo's exopack wheezed a bit harder. He felt for her hand as it got darker. His hearing had not been so good lately and he had to struggle to listen to Ni'awtu well enough to translate her Na'vi, but he could swear that he could now hear someone else very clearly, a familiar voice.

"She's _everywhere_. She's _beautiful_."

"Dimitri?" he thought.

"Hello Victor," came the answer. "Welcome home."

Ni'awtu felt Enzo's pulse flutter and stall. She gently pulled off his exopack so that he might feel the air of Pandora that he could never expose himself to in life. She sat there for a while, holding his hand, and then began to sing.

Other Na'vi came at the sound, all singing the same song, and they gathered around Enzo as the _atokirina_ gently landed on him. There was a human visitor with the tribe, documenting the last days of Victor Enzo, and he asked his guide, in a whisper, about the song.

"It is the _tìrey tìrol,_" was the answer, "the _life song._ When a Na'vi woman is with child, she prays to Eywa and creates a song, which is unique to that child. She sings the song as the child grows inside her, and as it is born, the women helping her also sing the song. As the child grows, the tribe learns the song and sings it at the coming of age, and the rite of passage. The song is sung for marriage, and we sing it at the time of passing. It is the first thing that we hear when we come into the world, and the last thing we hear as we leave it."

"But Enzo did not have a song."

"We created one for him."

The Na'vi dispersed, leaving flower petals on Enzo, all the while singing more and more softly. The visitor could not tell at what point the song turned to silence, and he turned to Ni'awtu.

"Why does this song have no ending?"

She answered gently. "None of them ever end."


End file.
